LexLux unveiled: The vision, challenges, and legacy of Lexington’s light show

On January 11, the Munroe Center for the Arts hosted LexLux, the spectacular kickoff event to illuminate Lexington at Depot Square.

Through tireless creativity and dedication, Munroe and their working partners brought light and joy to the dark days of winter—both literally and metaphorically. Their efforts united numerous organizations, including the Youth STEAM Initiative, which contributed a fantastic mapping projection.

A special highlight to the event was a projection mapping onto the Depot building, and later during Martin Luther King (MLK) weekend onto the Ellen Stone Building. The projections were created by the Youth STEAM Initiative, and two community mentors: Cristina Burwell, Executive Director of the Munroe Center for the Arts, and Mark Manasas, President of the Lexington Lyceum.

As a member of the Youth STEAM Initiative, I had the privilege of speaking with Cristina and Mark. In the following interview, they share the inspiration behind LexLux, the challenges they faced, and the lessons learned from hosting this remarkable event.

Liu: Can you please share a bit about yourself and the organization you represent?

Burwell: The Munroe Center for the Arts is our community arts center, providing arts education in music, dance, painting, drawing, ceramics, and summer camp for 40 years. The center also creates community events like this one (and others) throughout the year for people to participate in making and enjoying the arts.

Manasas: Lexington Lyceum Advocates is a non-profit organization working to revitalize Lexington’s beautiful historic Ellen Stone Building as a center for civic engagement and intercultural collaboration. The town-owned building has been empty for over 17 years after a pipe burst and flooded the building in 2007.

Cristina and I first got to know each other when we were part of a Select Board-appointed Stone Building Feasibility and Reuse Committee organized in 2020. Cristina’s work at Munroe, using art to draw different communities together, is so complementary to the work the Lyceum is doing, using Community Conversations to have meaningful dialogues about issues facing our community.

Liu: I had the pleasure of meeting you both at LexLux, and was able to experience first-hand the warm and cheerful ambiance of the event. The event was a perfect medley of art, innovation, technology, and history. Where was the idea for the LexLux event from?

Burwell: This idea was created by many different sparks. I began lighting up the pillars of the Ellen Stone Building with color a number of years ago, and have been wanting to do something at Munroe too. This year, for the 250th anniversary of the Battle of Lexington, I began conversations with the LPS Visual Arts Department. Our excitement included projection mapping, which led to a conversation with Wei Ding, professor of AI at UMass Boston and leader of the Youth STEAM Initiative.

Liu: In my opinion, every event is driven by a vision or a goal that shapes its planning and execution. What was the main purpose behind organizing the LexLux event?

Burwell: You can’t help but enjoy light and twinkles at a time when the days are short, dark, and cold. Many different cultures have festivals around light, and with our town full of so many different cultures, it seemed [like] a natural way to uplift us all at this time of year. And, it seemed like fun. As an arts center, we are fortunate enough to intersect with a lot of artists and were lucky enough to have them want to participate.

Manasas: The concept of bringing light, and a reason to get out of the house—to the dark, short nights of winter—resonated with all the groups Cristina connected with to bring these events to life.

Liu: There were a ton of different organizations, such as the Youth STEAM Initiative, that contributed to the success of the event. How did you guys organize so many different groups and split the work evenly?

Burwell: As a cultural institution in town, there have been many occasions where MCA could interact with both civic and cultural groups. A vision was sketched out for how we could all participate in LexLux, an invitation was made to gather and discuss, and then these groups just developed their own way to get involved.

Manasas: This is getting a bit philosophical, but if you read the works of Robert Putnam on third spaces and cultural capital, this type of event ticks the boxes as an activity that is not related to home, school, or work and connects people to trust, norms, and networks. Some of the organizations involved had worked together before. The more we continue to work together, the better we get at knowing who we can rely on, who has which skills and who has that “get things done” attitude and capability. 

Liu: Organizing an event like this often comes with its fair share of challenges, especially when faced with unpredictable circumstances. Considering it was a particularly cold Boston winter night, what was the greatest challenge you had to overcome?

Burwell: The devil is always in the details. There were quite a lot of logistics to oversee, and a lot of groups and individuals to coordinate—from making sure we had a safe campfire to not impacting traffic with the projections onto the building, but we had a good plan, good people, and good luck.

Manasas: Cristina made the call to go forward in spite of the snowy, cold weather. In retrospect, that made the event all the more special. It had the feeling of “embracing” the winter and just relying on the many volunteers Cristina organized to show up and help. From what I could see, they all passed with flying colors and good spirits.

Liu: What is the thing you are most proud of throughout the creation and hosting of LexLux?

Burwell: It was safe, it was fun, and we had a lot of people come together to enjoy that. I must also honestly say that I am pretty impressed that we could successfully get 300 people to assemble into the shape of a star for a drone photo. In retrospect, I’m not sure why I thought that was even possible. But in reality, the biggest star was the projection mapping. That was just the gem in the crown, and so incredibly creative and technically complicated to achieve.

Manasas: Getting to work with the Youth STEAM Initiative and the other organizations to make an event that was more than the simple sum of its parts.

Liu: Do you plan on hosting another LexLux, or potentially turning it into an annual event and building a new tradition for Lexington?

Burwell: We put this question to the crowd on the night, as well as an online survey, and there was a resounding “yes!” to this question. I was able to secure grants to make this happen this year, so the real question is if we can finance this again, and what it might look like. I do think all the participants are interested in doing this again, so there is a good chance that it will be repeated.

Manasas: Now that we have done it once, it only gets easier. Some of that social capital has been created. I think for the coming year, trying to fit it in and around, and mostly with, other major holidays such as Lunar New Year and MLK weekend as a truly community-wide inclusive event would be the way to really build on it as a new tradition.

Liu: What is something you would say to someone who was potentially trying to host an event like LexLux? Any suggestions or things to watch out for?

Burwell: We have put together a many-page document of what went well and what we would improve upon next time. One of the successes of this event was the participation and attendance by many people around town. My advice is to start with a creative vision and to invite a lot of people to help in building the event. Second to this is to have leadership to oversee tight planning around the details of the event. I was particularly delighted to see so many lanterns that people made during the prior week’s workshop brought to illumination night, as well as ones made by people at home from our online instructions—it was one of those details that surrounded the main event, but something that helped to build community and fun.

Manasas: There are so many active organizations with different events happening during different times of the year. The Lexington Observer events calendar and the Lex250 calendar are great places to start to make sure there aren’t conflicts. Get your event listed on one of these places as early as possible too. I would also strongly suggest trying to involve other community groups who have already done something similar to what you are trying to do. 

Liu: Is there anything else you’d like the community to know about LexLux or your hopes for future events like it?

Manasas: The projection-mapping videos that were created for the Depot building and Ellen Stone Building were great visual means of storytelling that had not, to the best of our knowledge, been used in Lexington before LexLux. We saw this event as a way to figure out the hardware, software, processes and skill-sets needed to make it work. Now that we have seen how engaging a medium it can be, we are working to figure out how to scale it for access by other organizations who want to tell the stories that are important to them.  

Burwell: When looking back at what we did, I am delighted to see how many people came together incited by the same desire to create something fun, inclusive, and uniquely creative. I am particularly honored to have worked with the Youth STEAM Team Initiative who were able to take an idea and make it blossom, both artistically and technically. This not only created a cracker-jack event, but also kick-started something that our town can learn from and use to create more similar projections in future celebrations. 

In this wonderful interview with Cristina and Mark, I was able to get a glance into the thoughts of the people behind the wonderful LexLux event. Their hard work and dedication brought the people of Lexington warmth and spectacle on a snow-covered, cold Saturday. Their efforts continue to enrich Lexington’s cultural landscape, inspiring residents and visitors alike to connect through art and creativity.

Jiawei Liu is an eighth grader at Clarke Middle School.